Department ofEarth Sciences

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The Department of Earth Sciences (EARS) is devoted to the study of the natural world in which we live. Working with a tightknit faculty, our students take courses and pursue research under the broad category of 'environmental geosciences'. In our research, we combine field studies with laboratory-based and theoretical studies of fundamental processes affecting the Earth's surface through geologic time.

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To help answer a reader’s question posed on The New York Times “Ask Well” column about the levels of arsenic found in rice vinegar and rice crackers, the newspaper’s Deborah Blum turns to Dartmouth’s Brian Jackson for his

In a story about arsenic and whether any level of the naturally occurring element might be safe to ingest, Discover magazine speaks with a number of Dartmouth scientists who’ve done research on arsenic in drinking water and in food products.

Bloomberg writes about a study linking above-normal amounts of naturally occurring radiation in a Pennsylvania creek to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the area of the creek, which flows into the Allegheny River.

Nature points to a new study co-authored by Dartmouth’s Mukul Sharma, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, that links the impact of a comet or meteor striking the Earth to the dramatic global climate change that occurred 12,900 years ago.

In a new study funded by the National Science Foundation, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report that for the first time, a dramatic climate shift that has long fascinated scientists has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet.

On June 18, Erich Osterberg left Alaska’s Denali National Park, where a collaborative Dartmouth-University of Maine-University of New Hampshire team had chronicled 1,000 years of regional climatic history.